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bnuungus

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two genuine questions bc im getting to the period in my life where ill have to start taking internships:
do you think you got valuable work experience through your internship?
do you think you were already qualified for that internship? (i.e you could have just been hired instead of being an intern)
So I had two internships in the field that I am now employed in and both were very different. The first one I got some fairly valuable experience (although ironically I had to leave this one bc they shut down their intern program bc they felt like they weren't doing a good job giving their interns experience) but I was definitely not qualified at all. I had no experience whatsoever and I straight up told them this in the interview. The skills from my first internship didn't transfer over to my second so I was again not qualified for the job but I did learn a lot in that internship and I'm employed full time at the company now. It got to the point where I almost wanted to drop out of college and just work full time for this company bc my college classes weren't teaching me anything more that I hadn't already learned in my job that I needed to know so college seemed even more like a waste of money. I'd say be careful about where you intern bc seeing some of the stories of other people at my uni it's very clear that some companies don't want to teach you anything at all and just use you as cheap labor.

also, isn't being "paid" in experience through an internship just as valuable because it gets you ready for higher-paying jobs? like an investment for the future?
no. unless you're living at home with your parents during this time how are you going to provide for yourself? If you're in college your spending money will run out since you won't have anything to replenish it. Investment only works if you can survive the initial loss of capital and this isn't even a real investment. Sure you'll have a slightly nicer resume but in my experience resumes really only get you into an interview and your people skills and relationships help you to get the job. If you're doing work for a company don't sell yourself short.

Idk based off of my experiences and the experiences of my peers when I was in college my biggest piece of advice is to make sure you don't take an internship that just wants to use you as cheap labor. You want to make sure you actually do learn something
 
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Absolute no brainer redditor decides this meme was made by a right winger, gets mad right wingers have great taste in higher education. Comments are full of people talking about how right wingers don't actually understand any of those while probably the guy that made the meme have no idea he is a right winger.
 
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Vetusomaru

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View attachment 35734
Absolute no brainer redditor decides this meme was made by a right winger, gets mad right wingers have great taste in higher education. Comments are full of people talking about how right wingers don't actually understand any of those while probably the guy that made the meme have no idea he is a right winger.
Dunno the political beliefs of the person who made this meme, it's still a cringe meme. Like, imagine labelling astronomy as "god tier" but labelling philosophy as shit tier.
 
Dunno the political beliefs of the person who made this meme, it's still a cringe meme. Like, imagine labelling astronomy as "god tier" but labelling philosophy as shit tier.
Right now just about all higher education are shit tier, not sure if he talks about them as uni courses or general diciplines thought. God tier is the only tier i would argue being good. Other choices he makes are retarded for example
>putting Music and philosopy in the same tier while music is objectively worse
>psychology is higher than philosophy
>compsci is higher than business studies and economics
 
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ZinRicky

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View attachment 35734
Absolute no brainer redditor decides this meme was made by a right winger, gets mad right wingers have great taste in higher education. Comments are full of people talking about how right wingers don't actually understand any of those while probably the guy that made the meme have no idea he is a right winger.
We can agree on one thing: everyone in that thread was pretty confused and out of touch with reality. But today is Thursday, so it's fine.
 
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M1083A1P2

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two genuine questions bc im getting to the period in my life where ill have to start taking internships:
do you think you got valuable work experience through your internship?
do you think you were already qualified for that internship? (i.e you could have just been hired instead of being an intern)
Good questions. I think the first question is tough to answer because what metric is used to determine the value of the "work experience" gained during the internship. Most interns are treated like kids that someone in the company was voluntold to babysit. Since there is no set standard that clearly defines valuable "work experience" you will have to convince yourself if it was or wasn't.

I think it is just a sham to exploit people for free labor. Intern is just a rebrand of squire or indentured servent.

A better question is whether or not the person, CEO, or founder of the company you are being an intern for also did an internship. If the work experience is so valuable why didn't they do it?
 
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handoferis

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I'm really glad I didn't ever do the whole internship thing (by way of dropping out of college) and instead did apprenticeship.

Sure, I got paid shitmoney when I was an apprentice, but I actually got paid, worked at a reasonably sized consultancy, filled my resume up with a bunch of bigname clients, then fucked off and immediately more than doubled my salary afterward. If I had actually finished college I would have been making significantly less money than I am now and would have significantly more debt. All the supposed "benefits" of doing an internship, without racking up student debt and getting paid instead. It is the superior method.
 
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M1083A1P2

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Semantics.
In the end, you're interacting with people working there and/or the owner. These are humans but summing them up under "company" so it could mean anything from a local small business or the globohomo mega corp seems like some rhetoric trick to make it sound more ok to waste their time.
Again, this whole fight for justice only works when your image of "employer" is some cartoon villain depiction of a capitalist. I personally met many employers in my life who were just normal boomers trying to get by like everyone else.
I did both my unpaid internships at small businisses and they were nice people and helped me a lot. They gave me a good resume which gave me an advantage at later interviews.
Well I'm doing the exact opposite of that. I already said I'm not referring to small businesses etc. I think we agree on that. My point of contention is the exploitation of workers. If anything the worker pretending to intern is gaining valuable experience and in a way there is a mutual exploitation going on.
 
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Andy Kaufman

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I'm not some socialist neet
internships should be abolished altogether
Trying to regulate what contracts two consenting parties agree on is pretty far up there, though.
You can make the argument of "the compensation you get is learning the business"
I can make the argument? That IS the entire argument because per definition, that is the reason you even take an internship. You are NOT yet a qualified worker and go there to learn.
Many people who enter into these internships are pressured into it in some way by their uni or just a general notion that you need to put in some time and work before you're allowed to get compensated for whatever reason
As I said, it sucks when you HAVE to do an internship and can't find one that pays but even then, how long do they usually go? A few weeks or a few months.
In German we have an old saying
"Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre."
Which means that during education/training you usually have a tough time but that's just part of learning a new skill.
Then again, I'm not even arguing about the quality or morality of internships, but that going to interviews without the intention of taking the position sounds wrong to me and the motivations behind that sounds immature.
 
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bnuungus

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Trying to regulate what contracts two consenting parties agree on is pretty far up there, though.

I can make the argument? That IS the entire argument because per definition, that is the reason you even take an internship. You are NOT yet a qualified worker and go there to learn.

As I said, it sucks when you HAVE to do an internship and can't find one that pays but even then, how long do they usually go? A few weeks or a few months.
In German we have an old saying
"Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre."
Which means that during education/training you usually have a tough time but that's just part of learning a new skill.
Then again, I'm not even arguing about the quality or morality of internships, but that going to interviews without the intention of taking the position sounds wrong to me and the motivations behind that sounds immature.
bro i said *unpaid* internships should be abolished. not internships in general. my whole argument is if you bring value to a company, they should compensate you for that. now I'm genuinely curious do you agree with that statement or no?
 
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no_chill

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bro i said *unpaid* internships should be abolished. not internships in general. my whole argument is if you bring value to a company, they should compensate you for that. now I'm genuinely curious do you agree with that statement or no?

Unpaid internships are illegal in my country, for the reasons you stated
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Honestly working in any capacity is kinda cringe. Just tell the government you're a disabled schizo descended from an indigenous tribe and watch the neet bucks roll in
 
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Andy Kaufman

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if you bring value to a company, they should compensate you for that. now I'm genuinely curious do you agree with that statement or no?
If you consent to doing it for free because you do it for educational purposes then they should not. It would be nice of them but they shouldn't be forced to. In a good internship, you also just don't work like a normal worker, you usually go around the business and see different departments where somoene shows you around and teaches you stuff and you do some basic stuff so you can see how it looks like in the real world.
 
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M1083A1P2

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If you consent to doing it for free because you do it for educational purposes then they should not. It would be nice of them but they shouldn't be forced to. In a good internship, you also just don't work like a normal worker, you usually go around the business and see different departments where somoene shows you around and teaches you stuff and you do some basic stuff so you can see how it looks like in the real world.
Okay I see where the disconnect is. Internships in Germany are a completely different story. Bosses over there 9 times out of ten have integrity and work just as hard as their employees do. On top of that they are always unfairly targeted by the Finanzamt. My Tante Monika has PTSD from those mother fuckers. I was living at my Oma's house when I was stationed in Baumholder and was going to pay her my off post housing allowance and she was too scared to take the money even though I know it was 100% legal for her to get it.

So yes the German form of internship is actually worth something, but in the Vereinigte Staaten it is something completely different and a scam.
 
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Andy Kaufman

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Okay I see where the disconnect is. Internships in Germany are a completely different story. Bosses over there 9 times out of ten have integrity and work just as hard as their employees do. On top of that they are always unfairly targeted by the Finanzamt. My Tante Monika has PTSD from those mother fuckers. I was living at my Oma's house when I was stationed in Baumholder and was going to pay her my off post housing allowance and she was too scared to take the money even though I know it was 100% legal for her to get it.

So yes the German form of internship is actually worth something, but in the Vereinigte Staaten it is something completely different and a scam.
Yeah maybe it's just America being shit again for workers.
Oh and sorry about the FA fucking over your aunt.
I studied tax law in NRW and here the FA doesn't have the time to fuck with normal people like that. But in RP they have too much time on their hands to just go around and bully people.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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May I ask what you do for a living?
I do programming-for-hire in the game industry. I also repeatedly have to wade through shitty "offers" by scammy companies trying to take me for a ride and get free labour out of me.
The point is only good when you oversimplify and dehumanise companies and just act as if every company out there is a giant, global mega corp.
Can you name a single "reasonable, middle class" company that offers unpaid internships? This is literally a megacorp problem.

I'll respond to the rest later. But the gist of it is:

If unpaid internships existed purely in a vacuum, there would be far less of a problem and I doubt I would be going on large unhinged rants about them. It's like gambling - there's nothing wrong with offering wagers, at least on principle. But in much the same way gambling companies continually prey on weak, gullible or desperate people, unpaid internships are thrown around constantly by businesses and educational institutions as "a possible BIG career step" or "a good way to gain experience", despite that mostly being a lie. Once people are in the internship they have been sold under false pretences, they can be kept there because a lot of the time it's tied to a "work experience" program through university or school or whatever and they can't leave without risking some consequence (often educational organisations are working together or are in on the scam), or even worse, they are made a mandatory part of the curriculum so people have no choice but to get scammed. This is why it's moral to gum up and break the system. This isn't like shoplifting where you basically walk in and take stuff to fuck the store over. This is companies actively engaging in bad behaviour that they know is bad, and people responding to it by wasting their time on purpose.

It does seem to be very different in places like Germany, so to make things absolutely clear: My experience with unpaid internships is the Australian version, which is quite similar to the standard shitty American idea. There's more often than not no experience to be had - in fact, there are corporations here who specifically avoid mindless, manual work (like setting up Windows on 3000 machines) and then just constantly get interns to do it. I literally know people personally who took an internship and the entire time was spent moving boxes, they learned nothing (this was for an IT company). The intern culture here is absolutely plagued with immorality, and the whole system is a scam. It's actually worse here because even paid internships have a lot of issues too (companies just using them as a cheap labour source and not a "educational position" etc). Finding any way to short circuit that system is morally good, as is finding any way to disrupt the gambling racket. It's not immoral to steal money from a poker machine for the same reason that it's not immoral to waste an interviewers time when they are offering an unpaid internship.

If an honest, middle-class business is offering one, that's probably a different story. But they usually don't. In fact from my experience small businesses don't usually offer internships at all, because they are usually far more generous and just offer paid positions when they need work done. Faceless megacorps are the only ones really doing it, and it's hurting nobody to hurt them. I'm sure the interviewer doesn't care - they get paid either way. It's only the board of directors and the profit margins. And to be honest, I don't consider board members of megacorporations human at this point.

If you want to see a REALLY fucked up system, one where we see actual, no bullshit, forced slave labour, look up unpaid internships nasty cousin - work for the dole schemes.

I admit my initial post on this was very crass, accusatory, and black-and-white on the issue. Because of your responses, I have had to think about it more deeply and pinpoint the exact issue (and why I believe it's moral in this case) rather than being able to just rant about the whole thing. So I guess that's a plus. Hopefully after clarifying things a bit, my position seems a bit more reasonable. I don't hate companies or capitalism on principle, but this is one of those big problems that plagues the west and I'm glad to fight against it with some malicious compliance.
 
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